Morning journal and courier., 1887-05-19
NOVELS.
How They May Possibly Re Made By
 Horn NovelfSts

How They May Possibly Re Made By
 Born NovelIsts.
 Speaking of MT. Julian Hawthorne's Vas sar lecture, "How Novels Are Made," the London News says; He thinks that a man of genius-nobody can be offended by the mention of Shakespeare as an example could not tell how his works got written, while the author of shilling story could produce his note books, plots, stylographic pen and explain all his process. But we venture to think that the difference is only difference of degree. Shakespeare could have said, just as easily as the author of 'The Black Brigantine," "Oh, I just took 'The History of Hamblet' tor the old Eng fish play about Hamlet), land faked it about bit and gave Burbage plenty of fat you know" In some such simple old English terms would William, if he could answer, tell us how he wrote Hamlet" And really the shilling novelist can say no more. He met an incident in real life, or in book or ia paper, and he devevoped it and worked in the results of his thought and experience, such as they were. As far as the authors know, the process of composition is much the same always, though few indulge in ec- centric habits; and MT. Hawthorne himself is said to nave once written for a prodigieus unheard of number of hours at one sitting. They pick up ideas as they go on, and in his new letters we learn how Mr. Thackeray se- lected notions for ''Pendennis" from his dai- ly life, even while that work was coming out in monthly numbers. Nor do any authors know exactly what they are going to say when they sit down to write All pens, though the penmakers are unaware of it, have familiar spirits resident in them, which 1ooJ fNt thn onfh hn nr, He never dreamed of these ideas till he had the magical pen in his hand, the pen mur- murs them and he accepts them, and often Qike Thackeray when he made Becky admire Rawdon for beating Lord Steyne) he wonders at his own cleverness. It is not his own; it that is why he can never explain "how it is done." Or if this theory of the lutin of the pen be secuted, we suppose that the brain gets heated, excited, borne above itself, and 50 when the brain cools down the author be- comes a commonplace mortal and torgets how he got into fairyland. Therefore they never can explain how their works are writ ten. though perhaps they could often trace back, if they cared, the steps of the associ- alton of ideas.
 Apparently novelists sometimes begin with a set of characters and think over them till they begin to move and act, as the table moves if people sit aro1nd it with their fin
 
 Fair' was invented. Thackeray had Becky in his mind and he composed Emmy cut of a collection of living models. Then perhaps he set to work wondering how these ladies would act and react on each others fortunes. Then more queer characters-old Sir Pitt, old Miss Crawley, the notorious Lord Steyne and so on-insisted on joining the dance. But there is no puzzle to be explained, no astonishing situation to be accounted for, as in novels of the type of Gaboriau's. An other mode of birth, we may conjecture, was that of F'Bleak House." Dickens seems to have said to himself now let us have fling at some national abuse, and he found that great palpable cockshy, the Court of Chan cery, before him. So the story had to set forth the evils of chancery as displayed in the sorrows of set of worthy ruined peo- pie. Then Leigh Hunt came in the authors way, and promptly MT. Harold Skimpole was devised and joined the dance and so on Probably cheap novels of murder and mys- tery are written by devising strange sltua- tion. and working back from that to invent ways in which it might have happened. You introduce a gentleman who finds the fire smoking dreadfully at breakfast. He exam ines the chimney and finds in it the body. head downwards, of lovely girl of eight cen. How in the world did she get there! You work back till you have invented plausible theory of the whimsical circum- stance, and that theory is your novel. Ga boriau often worked back as far as the revo- lution, or the edict of Nantes, if not the crusades, before he could get room to turn round in And no wonder, for if you will introduce duke shooting all the company in a suburban pot house, his motives, if honor able. must be as 'tremote" as the intentions of the young lover in the story. AAy novel ist can tell us things like this about his art, just as Theophile Gautier told someone that he wrote in red, black and green inks to di- vert and cheer his labors f'When you reach the sixth slip you shall try the red ink, |" he would say to himself, and found it great comfort-as indeed it is. But Theophile did not get his style from his colored inks, nor Shakespeare his Hamlet from 'tThe History of Ham mblet." Probably ssthe common steadfast dunce," as Milton says of the peri cd, screamed that Shakespeare was a thief and that anyone could plagiarize the sHisto- " of Hamblet." But the dunce never did SO himself nor did his friends, and only learned people like Dr. Furnivall know even the names of these moral and virulent ob- scurities.